Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste. A. M. Macfarlane and R. C. Ewing, eds. 2006. Island Press, Washington, DC. 416 pp. $72 cloth, $29 paperback.

What options exist for the safe and reliable disposal of spent high-level radioactive material? From an engineering viewpoint, reprocessing makes the most sense. If such spent material is reprocessed, which is being done in various parts of the world, the volume of waste can be reduced by 80–90%. Many of the radioisotopes can find beneficial uses, and only the remaining long lived, high energy, lower volume residues need to be addressed as wastes. The benefit, of course, is that substantial volume reduction has occurred, which many believe reduces, yet does not totally eliminate, risk. No matter how attractive this volume reduction and the partial beneficial use option definitely are, reprocessing has become a political football in Washington with no practical policy change in sight. As a result only two disposal options remain: (1) store this spent material on site, where it is likely that such long-term storage was not contemplated and facility capacity becomes taxed, or (2) move the spent material to a central repository for long-term storage. Option #2 is the focus of this book, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste.